The Judiciary Police (PJ) said in a statement on Tuesday that they have recently received reports from a number of residents that they had received an SMS on their smartphones sent from a local smartphone number offering them “soaring” stock earnings.

“[BOC]https://chat.whatsapp.com/F1MZHWJP884BfFm21i4rzK [Click the link to join the gro immediately and get the soaring shares which will be announced tomorrow”, the SMS said.

“BOC” is the official abbreviation of Bank of China. Apparently, “gro” is supposed to mean “group”.

The message urges its recipients to click on the link in order to benefit from allegedly soaring stocks.

The PJ statement pointed out that the SMS amounts to telecommunications fraud as the police have confirmed with the relevant bank that it never sent out the message.

According to the statement, the Judiciary Police have not received any reports about residents having been defrauded by the sender of the fake bank SMS. However, the Judiciary Police said that as they expected scammers to continue sending out similar SMSes to cheat their recipients, they decided to issue yesterday’s statement urging residents to be vigilant about these kinds of fraudulent messages and not to believe them.

The PJ statement also provided a raft of anti-fraud tips such as not to click on links or pictures provided by strangers or that are of unknown origin, to prevent viruses from “infecting” one’s smartphone or computer system; to confirm websites’ trustworthiness and pay close attention to network security information; not to share any bank account information with an unfamiliar website, nor to transfer funds to an unknown account; to install and regularly update the antivirus software and firewall on one’s computer or smartphone; to regularly change the passwords of one’s computer and online account; and to forward anti-fraud messages to remind relatives and friends of the risk.

Anyone suspecting that they have been the target of telecommunications fraud or other crimes should immediately report their suspicion by phoning the PJ fraud prevention hotline 8800 7777 or 24-hour PJ hotline 993.